the situation in Ventimiglia is as follows:
- high hundreds of refugees stuck on a newly securitised border
- opening of a new camp, run by the red cross
-mimicking of the strategy in Calais (the similarities are startling)
official humanitarian camp, internal deportations (including flying
people to Sardinia in a chartered jet), hardened border, pressure to
claim asylum in Italy
-conflation of migration and terrorism after the Nice attack
-strong repression of No Borders
three salient points
1) a tale of two camps
as the Red Cross camp opened it did not have room for everybody. so
somebody from the municipal government suggested that people stay in an
abandoned stable / railway platform next to the Red Cross center, as a
temporary measure. No Borders managed to move quickly and develop this
space into an autonomous camp, providing gas, cooking equipment, running
water, and a small infopoint, encouraging assemblies etc etc. we are
trying to brief people on asylum and the situation in france and uk when
they have just arrived in europe, to save on the hard slow learning
process. Now there are more people in the autonomous camp than the Red
Cross center as people do not trust the Red Cross and thier fenced
controlled space.
It is kind of fascinating, with two different camps, one humanitarian
controlled and closed, the other open and run jointly by europeans and
the refugees themselves, right next to each other. Personally i think
our autonomous camp is taking the red cross to the cleaners (they now
have capacity for 300 but only 60 are staying inside!) but also the red
cross are spending more energy on attacking us than on getting their
space running. they have called the police on us many times, sent their
arabic speaking workers to spy on us, stolen our cooking equipment, cut
the pipe between the burner and the gas bottle, and most recently cut
off our water supply
2) repression on activists
the repression here is quite strong at the moment. in the space of one
week, 1 person was arrested for helping people without papers move, 2
more have just been arrested for politically motivated drug busts. they
hand out something called fol de villa, which is an administrative
procedure which bans people from the area with no possibility for a
legal recourse. there are not many long time activists left without a
fol de villa. the anti repression effort is taking a lot of energy, as
people are having to go to lawyers and court cases (nothing new there)
also the police are currently opening an investigation into no borders
assisting people crossing the border here. there is also the usual
bullshit ID controls and visits to the police station
3) money situation
Ventimiglia No Borders is running out of money! the freespot (think PCF
in a garage), providing logistical support for the autonomous camp, lyca
sims, petrol etc etc etc is costing them a lot of money and they will
not be able to continue doing the many many projects that they are
currently doing for long.
Basically, in my opinion these guys are doing a lot right now, they are
on the hotspot of the border into france during high summer and for them
to be able to continue they need more funding.
love and rage from a sunny border
bank details:
FREESPOT (Banca ETICA)
IBAN code: IT49E03599018990501885
people here say spread it around. we are now providing almost ALL food
for the autonomous camp since the cops scared off the associations
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» Italy, An update from Ventimiglia & call for support